Historical background

Before public libraries existed in Canada, the British colony experienced a scattering of special libraries organized by religious orders in the seventeenth century. By the late eighteenth century, however, several attempts to create secular institutions had been made. For example, Sir Frederick Haldimand, the Governor of the Province of Quebec (1778–1784), established a small subscription library in 1779 in an attempt to help unite the English and French inhabitants. A few years later, in 1796, The Montreal Library was founded – this may be considered the first real public library in Canada – followed in 1800 by

a library in Niagara, the first public library in Upper Canada. As Canada grew and extended westward in the early nineteenth century, the English model of Mechanics’ Institutes proved to be an important influence. These institutes were originally volunteer associations of workers who wanted to improve themselves by taking control of their own education, and the principal intent of the collections was for the self-edification of the readers. By 1828 Montreal had a Mechanics’ Institute, and the York Mechanics’ Institute opened in 1830. Canadian Mechanics’ Institutes were developed less by manual workers, however, and more by a growing middle class interested in activities for themselves and reading material for wage earners. By 1857, Upper Canada enjoyed at least 58 Mechanics’ Institutes (Wallace, 1948). Such organizations, along with professional, subscription, and social libraries, filled an important need for many years but eventually proved to be insufficient for evolving demands. The debate was especially strong for Mechanics’ Institutes whose readers seemed to demand more access to current news and popular fiction rather than the institutes’ preference for materials promoting science and the arts.

In 1882, the Ontario Legislature passed the Free Libraries Act, which called for the establishment of libraries financed through a municipal tax levy. Any city, town, or incorporated village could thus petition for a free library, open to the public. This Act also outlined the nine-member Board of Management, those who would serve to govern the library, as well as their conditions of being on the board, and their duties. The Act did not simply set the parameters for free public libraries, however; it also provided for any existing Mechanics’ Institute to transfer property to the corporation of the municipality. Whereas the Mechanics’ Institutes were developed to enable adult education, public libraries were not burdened with this narrow mission, and other services could more easily be developed. In 1895 the Act was further revised, and the Mechanics’ Institutes were designated to be public libraries.

The number of free public libraries, as a result of such legislation, was bound to grow rapidly as other provinces followed the Ontario example of legislating tax support for library services. In addition, within a few years, the effect of Andrew Carnegie’s support for public libraries would also be felt in Canada. Between 1901 and 1923, some 125 Carnegie grant offers culminated in an actual library; because of its longer period of development and its existing support for public libraries, Ontario received the largest number of Carnegie grants (111). Perhaps the greatest contribution of the Carnegie program on public libraries in Canada was its emphasis on open stacks, children’s services, and standard cataloging.

Library training generally lagged behind the arrival of true public libraries, however, with two main exceptions. McGill University in Montreal started a summer library school in 1904; this did not increase to a one-year course until 1927, at which time it was accredited by the American Library Association (ALA) as Type IV under its ‘Minimum Standards for Summer Courses in Library Science’. By 1930 it became a graduate program whose requirement was a Bachelor’s degree, and soon thereafter accredited by the ALA as a graduate school – the first such institution in Canada to achieve this ranking (McGill University, 2011). A short course was also instituted by the Minister of Education in Toronto (under the direction of the Inspector of Public Libraries) in 1911; by 1916 the Ontario Library School was established, and this institution continued short courses until 1928 when it became part of the Ontario College of Education (University of Toronto), and it expanded its short course to one academic year.

Current framework

Public library service continued to expand during the rest of the twentieth century, especially around 1967 when Canada celebrated its centennial and grants were available for construction. The inflationary years of the 1970s slowed this growth, which was further hampered by some recessionary periods after 1980. By the 1990s, however, public libraries were in good shape as shown by the studies of Canada’s National Core Library Statistics Program, which was begun in 1995 to ascertain the impact of library services – public, academic, and special – on Canadian society. At that time it was concluded that ‘of the three library sectors represented in the National Core Library Statistics Program in 1996, Canadians looked to public libraries more often than to any other type of library for their question answering and collection borrowing needs, 77% of all inquiries and 80% of all circulations. At the same time, public libraries accounted for only 54% of all library staff, 31% of all collection holdings, and 63% of all service points’ (Schrader, 1999). The National Core Library Statistics Program reports that at the end of the twentieth century, when Canada reached a population of 30.5 million, public libraries were serving at least 28.5 million municipal residents and, including the overlap with provincial and territorial libraries, it appears that ‘the entire population of Canada was covered or close to it’ (Schrader and Brundin, 2002). The program also reports that ‘of the three library sectors represented in the National Core Library Statistics Program in 1999, public libraries provided the highest proportions of question answering and collection lending services. They accounted for 77% of all inquiries and 88% of all circulations reported in the 1999 Program … At the same time that public libraries in the 1999 Program predominated in question answering and collection lending services, however, their share of collection holdings was only 28%. Their proportion of total staff was 54% and of total expenditures was 52%’ (Schrader and Brundin, 2002).

The firm foundation of public libraries in Canada was thus established, and the twentieth century did, indeed, see moments of continued growth along the early successes of municipally-supported libraries, perhaps dictated by the structure of the Canadian government, which is somewhat decentralized. The provincial governments have undertaken the burden of social and public services. Canada’s ten provinces and three territories control their own library systems and all libraries are governed by a library act (with the exception of Quebec libraries).

Funding is primarily a duty of the provincial or territorial government, provided on a per capita basis. Municipal tax revenues and other local income make up most of the funding, supplemented with provincial grants. Municipalities normally maintain the physical facility, but each province or territory is unique, as can be the funding model. Although territories remain under the jurisdiction of the federal government, they normally enjoy many of the same privileges of the provinces, and their public libraries are managed along the same model. Provinces and territories are thus similar in the way they make their public libraries the responsibility of a ministry or department of the provincial or territorial government. Although these ministries and departments can vary, they serve the same purpose in that they coordinate funding, maintain services, and control legislation for their public libraries.

Because of the differences in provinces and territories the terminology that has arisen to describe these local libraries has grown differently, even though the governing structure is often similar. Local library boards are composed of several types of members, such as local government members. A city council will often make appointments to its various boards, including public library boards. These library boards are responsible for their institution’s budgets and library policy related to the operation of the library, much like any public library in the United States. The library board thus relinquishes responsibility of daily operations to the library staff.

As with any nations’ public library system, Canada has also had to address the situation of providing Internet access. As part of the Connecting Canadians initiative, the Community Access Program (CAP) was developed. Instituted in 1994, CAP is an initiative of the government to provide Canadians with public-access Internet as well as the necessary technology skills. Industry Canada (telecommunications ministry) administers the program, much of which also depends on individual initiative, and public libraries were slated to play an important role (along with schools and community centers). Dr. Heidi Julien has examined in depth the reaction of public libraries to this new role and generally believes that public libraries responded well, and connected early, even when faced with financial and technological difficulties – as Canada became the first country to get all its public libraries online (Julien and Helliwell, 2000). Although funding has been reduced over the years, Industry Canada still manages the applications to the Community Access Program. However, because CAP is designed to help ‘Canadians, wherever they live, take advantage of emerging opportunities in the new global knowledge-based economy’, the role of instruction – not just access – has also become important (Industry Canada, 2011). This instructional role has not gone unnoticed because ‘one of the stated aims of the Connecting Canadians policy has been to facilitate the development of Canadians’ information literacy skills. This is a somewhat natural role for public libraries, too, since they have been in the forefront of basic literacy skills development for a very long time’ (Julien, 2003). Although this may seem a ‘natural role’ for public libraries, a variety of issues has made it difficult for libraries to fulfill this promise – issues such as funding and library staff acceptance of this role. Julien concludes: ‘My previous research demonstrates that despite the urgent need to develop such skills, and the expectations that public libraries fulfill that role, the real experiences of public librarians and of public library customers may not bear out this expectation’ (Julien, 2003). In a more recent study, Julien concentrated on information literacy training conducted in public libraries, concluding that some library staff have accepted this new task but ‘not everyone is approaching the teaching role with enthusiasm’ (Julien and Hoffman, 2008). Around the same time, Siobhan Stevenson cites several other findings to conclude that the promise of using public libraries as a principal means to achieve the broad goals of Connecting Canadians initiative has simply fallen short (Stevenson, 2008).

Legislation and legal structure

The difficulty in describing the management of public libraries in Canada certainly stems from the division of different library acts across the provinces and territories, each with its unique demographic and needs. The Federation of Law Societies of Canada has created the Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII) whose objective is to provide access to the legal heritage of all Canadian jurisdictions (http://www.canlii.org/en/), and from here it is easy to access the various library acts (listed in Table 3.1).

A quick comparison between two differently positioned provinces reveals major variations in how libraries are described and formulated. For example, the large and populous province of Ontario (with more than 12,000,000 inhabitants) has a Public Libraries Act that outlines three types of libraries:

The small and less populated province of New Brunswick (with not much more than 700,000 inhabitants) has a Public Libraries Act that is, understandably, simpler in the way it designates its public libraries among the eight library regions in the province:

Other provinces use terms including municipal libraries, community libraries, regional libraries, union libraries, district libraries, and so on, each defined in the Public Libraries Act of that province. One piece of legislation all share, however, is that of no fees for library service. The Ontario Public Library Act proclaims free service: ‘Every board shall allow the public to … reserve and borrow circulating materials that are prescribed or belong to a prescribed class … without making any charge’. New Brunswick defines the public library as: ‘ “public library” means a library where services are available without charge to residents of the Province’. Saskatchewan adds ‘No public library board shall charge a fee for borrowing books and other print materials from public libraries by residents of Saskatchewan’. And British Columbia: ‘A library board must allow residents and electors of any area served by the library board to do the following free of charge: (a) borrow library materials that are normally lent by the library and that belong to prescribed categories of library materials’. All provinces that have a Public Libraries Act, in fact, legislate free service with the exception of Alberta. During a period of fiscal conservatism in the late 1980s, Alberta instituted fees to replace lost funding, and these fees now make up 10 to 15 percent of the library’s annual budget (Hammond, 2007). The annual fee can range anywhere between $5 and $20, with free cards for children, but even the official age of a child can vary – anywhere up to 18 years old – depending on the library. A handful of Alberta cities, starting with the Banff Public Library in 2000, have chosen to remove this fee, but the library service for a fee is still entrenched in the province in spite of an improved financial situation. This controversial procedure is, of course, only for the issuance of a library card, not for general use of the library (it is not a membership fee). In any case, some feel that the non-standard practice of charging for a library card is discriminatory, a form of double taxation that disproportionately burdens lower-income families – and which may exclude them altogether (Mardiros, 2001).

Conclusion

The first decade of the twenty-first century appears to have been a successful period for public libraries in Canada in spite of the evolution in expected services and the fluctuations in financial support. The Canadian Urban Libraries Council (CULC) authorized a study of data collected between 2000 and 2009. In ‘An Analysis of Public Library Trends’, Lumos Research Inc. reports per capita library transactions has risen very steadily during this time, from an average of 16.6 in 2000 to 24.1 by 2009, an increase of 45 percent (Canadian Urban Libraries Council, 2011b). These per capita transactions are defined as in-person visits, circulation of materials, program attendance, and use of the Internet and electronic databases. In-person visits have not increased much; this augmentation in library service has instead come from digital usage, especially visits to the library website and its catalog. Electronic database usage made up less than 3 percent of all transactions by 2009 but it is expected that this number will rise much higher in the near future. Perhaps more interesting is the observation that the increase in user transactions set against the inevitable increase in library expenses actually led to a decline of 27 percent in the amount of cost per use (Canadian Urban Libraries Council, 2011b). As can be surmised, inflation and higher overheads resulted in a smaller percentage of the library budget being spent on materials, and the decade saw a decrease from 13 percent to 11 percent. But spending on materials seems to have a noticeable effect on library use: the libraries that spend the most per capita on materials enjoy the highest percentage of in-person visits, Internet visits, and library circulation. The difference between the libraries at the high end of per capita spending on materials and those on the low end is surprising: those institutions at the high end enjoy almost double the amount of user transactions than those libraries on the low end (Canadian Urban Libraries Council, 2011b). This spending is not necessarily on books, however. Books made up 72 percent of materials purchased in 20002001, but this number fell to 61 percent by 2009. Periodical expenditures have also fallen, from 11 percent to 8 percent. Electronic materials and audiovisual materials (CDs and DVDs) have seen large increases over the past decade. Purchases in electronic format (such as e-books, databases, images, etc) rose from 6 percent to 11 percent, while audiovisual materials increased from 12 percent to 20 percent of the total materials expenditure.

One factor that has not changed for Canadian public libraries in the first decade of the twenty-first century has been the revenue source. Municipal revenue for public libraries has remained steady at 86 percent of the revenue total since 2001. Municipalities have thus made up the difference in increases of revenue with a jump of 48 percent between 2001 and 2009. Provincial sources of revenue, which have consistently made up 8 percent of the total by source over the past few years, have increased only 18 percent; federal revenue, which has also averaged around 7 percent of the total source, declined by 22 percent during the same period. Municipal sources thus bear the brunt of rising costs with slipping assistance from provincial sources.

In general, Canada has a very strong public library system. It has the benefit of a long history of public library service, and the concept is ingrained into Canadian culture. Just as in the United States and other countries, an emphasis on local funding and local legislation means services between the provinces and territories are uneven, although the inequalities are not as pronounced as they are in other parts of the world. Public libraries in Canada, although not immune to the funding shortfalls created by the recent financial downturn, have also not experienced the widespread threat of closure like those in the United Kingdom. Generally speaking, Canada is similar to the United States in that it enjoys a strong tradition of public libraries but would benefit from a national library policy that would even out the somewhat uneven levels of library service across the nation.

References

Useful websites